So, how am I going to get out of this rut? Well, I'm going to try a few things that have helped in the past:
- Read books on writing like "Writing Science in Plain English", "The Elements of Style", or "Writing Science" just to name a few.
- Start storyboarding my papers - This was a tip I got from one of my Master Thesis committee members. It has helped numerous times. Turns out I'm a bit more of a visual thinker, so having a picture (sometimes for every single paragraph) helps me to not just organize the paper, but also put words on a page. Describing the pictures is sometimes easier than facing a completely blank page.
- Practice writing! Practice makes perfect, or so I'm told. In some of the writing books I have read they provide writing exercises. However, I prefer writing blog posts. This may explain why my grammar rarely improves... But that's another hurdle for another day.
In the coming weeks I hope to have little posts about the papers that came out before I started this blog and while I was at Aerospace (or didn't get to writing up before I moved there). I'd love to hear what helps you when faced with writer's block. I am not a natural writer and unfortunately it is a key component of being a scientist.